????THE number of applications for patents by Qingdao companies increased sharply in the first six months of this year. ????More than 1,750 were patents for inventions, an increase of 38.5 percent over the same period last year. ????The total number of patents for inventions and design was 7,882, the most in Shandong Province. Of these, 76 were applications for foreign patents via Patent Cooperation Treaty. ????The city launched a series of activities and training to promote patent applications. At the end of June, there had been 15,331 applications for patents for inventions and 3,577 had been approved by the national intellectual copyright bureau. ????In Qingdao, every million people own 328.7 patents. ????(Wang Yuanyuan, Zhao Di) | 